1. Field of the Invention
This invention related to methods for tutoring students, and more particularly a machine- or computer-aided instructional method that presents the student with life-like situations that would be encountered upon mastering of the tutored subject.
2. Description of the Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37. C.F.R. .sctn..sctn.1.97-1.98
In order to learn an unfamiliar (yet well-established) subject, there are often many means by which the knowledge of that subject may be acquired. However, these previous means often split the subject matter up into categories so that the matter might be more easily taught or more easily learned. Splitting the subject matter up into categories can provide the student with fundamental lessons that are easy to grasp. However, upon facing a real-life situation that requires the integration and synthesis of what has been learned in order to perform a complex task, the student may be daunted and/or overwhelmed with the complexity of that task. While the lessons may have prepared the student to perform each individual act or item that is required to accomplish the task as a whole, putting all that has been learned together in a coordinated and useful manner has often been relegated to on-the-job training. This limits the student's usefulness when first addressing real-life situations. When the student undertakes the problems addressed by the lessons, the student still lacks the necessary experience and must gain further knowledge before becoming proficient in that field.
Textbooks and other written instructional works are the classical means by which knowledge is conveyed to students. The material presented to the student through textbooks and other written works do not provide dynamic feedback to the student and when the student applies the knowledge gained from textbooks, mistakes made by the student cannot be recognized and corrected until another reviews the student's work, or until the student discovers the mistake. The ultimate goal of any learning process is the correct application of that which has been learned. With textbooks and written materials, when the knowledge learned is applied by the student to a specific situation, there is no assurance that the student's knowledge has been applied correctly.
Further, textbooks often deal with the instructional subject matter in separated segments as chapters. The chapters of a textbook often set forth their subject matter independently of the other chapters. Exercises and questions often present at the end of such chapters do not tend to weave together the different subjects of the previous chapters, although the questions may rely upon work previously done by the student. Due to textbook's presentation of subject matter in an independent and separated manner, the continuity of the subject matter can be interrupted, leaving the student without knowledge crucial to the successful application of what has been learned. Although the textbook has presented to the student the elements required to address real-life situations and problems, the practical relationships existing between the various elements may not be so easily addressed and may present issues not set forth in a textbook.
Like the textbooks in which they appear, question and answer sections often found at the end of the textbook chapters suffer from their independent and isolated approach to the subject matter they address. Material from other chapters is not directly addressed as the subject matter of the immediately preceding chapter is considered more pertinent. A student's answers to questions at a chapter's end are only given feedback by comparison to the answers that may also be included with the questions. Explanations for these answer may be absent, preventing the student from learning the process by which the correct answer may be obtained. Often, having consulted an available answer section, the student's interest may flag so that the next question can be addressed. By providing the answer to the student, better learning of the subject matter by the student may be diminished. Upon arriving at an answer, the student has no second chances to independently arrive at the correct answer once a correct answer is provided to the student. The question itself cannot provide clues or guidelines in the right context for the student's better understanding as the static nature of the media presenting the question (textbooks) cannot gauge and anticipate the student's activities.
Another means by which a student can learn a previously well-established subject is by preparing and/or creating in-class or take-home projects. Such projects normally enhance the learning process by requiring from the student greater initiative and effort over an extended period of time. Such projects can be accomplished individually or on a group basis and may or may not be supervised by an instructor.
In-class or take-home projects can require a significant amount of instructor's time in order to guide the student(s) through the learning process. If the student(s) are left to pursue the project on their own, any errors generated and included in the project may detrimentally affect, even jeopardize, the learning objects sought by the project. While such projects can bridge the gap between the discrete subject matters set forth in textbooks and classes, errors made early in the project can be difficult to locate and correct. Such early errors can also lead the student astray by pursuing courses of action that miss the learning objectives of the project.
Preparatory courses can be of some limited help to students as they can prepare them for professional examinations and/or train them for particular jobs. Such preparatory courses are usually costly and require the assistance of an instructor. The correspondence types of such preparatory courses may be akin to textbooks with questions and answers and/or test and quiz publications.
Test and quiz publications can provide a measure by which the student's grasp of the subject can be evaluated. Such test and quiz publications do not provide specific information about the questions or problems presented to the student in an interactive manner than can anticipate the challenges that might present themselves to the student. In learning a new subject, a student can benefit from challenges that force the student to extend what learning has been previously attained. However, if the challenges are too great, the student may become dismayed at the amount of work that remains to be performed and the amount of learning that remains to be understood. Furthermore, test and quiz publications cannot address issues of continuity from one discrete subject matter to another unless such test or quizzes are in the form of practice sets. Practice sets also suffer from the same limitations as class and take-home projects. If answers are provided for the student so that the student's answer can be compared to the correct answers, second attempts by the student to attain the correct answer are diminished, as for textbook questions and answers. If the answers are not provided, incorrect responses will affect the outcome of a series of related questions and almost always defeat the learning objective of the test or quiz publication. No hands-on learning experience can be conveyed to the student through test or quiz publications.